Defining display formats
Display formats are represented through masks, where certain
characters have special significance. PowerBuilder supports four kinds
of display formats, each using different mask characters:
-
Numbers
-
Strings
-
Dates
-
Times
For example, in a string format mask, each @ represents
a character in the string and all other characters represent themselves.
You can use the following mask to display phone numbers:
|
1 |
(@@@) @@@-@@@@ |
Combining formats
You can include different types of display format masks in
a single format. Use a space to separate the masks. For example,
the following format section includes a date and time format:
|
1 |
mmmm/dd/yyyy h:mm |
Using sections
Each type of display format can have multiple sections, with
each section corresponding to a form of the number, string, date,
or time. Only one section is required; additional sections are optional
and should be separated with semicolons (;). You cannot use sections in
edit masks. Semicolons can be used only in display formats.
The following format specifies different displays for positive
and negative numbers—negative numbers are displayed in
parentheses:
|
1 |
$#,##0;($#,##0) |
Using keywords
Enclose display format keywords in square brackets. For example,
you can use the keyword [General] when
you want PowerBuilder to determine the appropriate format for a number.
Using colors
You can define a color for each display format section by
specifying a color keyword before the format. The color keyword
is the name of the color, or a number that represents the color,
enclosed in square brackets: [RED] or [255]. The
number is usually used only when a color is required that is not
provided by name. The named color keywords
are:
-
[BLACK]
-
[BLUE]
-
[CYAN]
-
[GREEN]
-
[MAGENTA]
-
[RED]
-
[WHITE]
-
[YELLOW]
The formula for combining primary color values into a number
is:
|
1 |
256*256*<span>blue</span> + 256*<span>green</span> + <span>red</span><span>=</span><span>number</span> |
where the amount of each primary color is specified as a value
from 0 to 255. For example, to specify cyan, substitute 255 for
blue, 255 for green, and 0 for red. The result is 16776960.
If you want to add text to a numeric display format and use
a color attribute, you must include the escape character ()
before each literal in the mask. For example:
|
1 |
[red]Dep : ### |
Table 22-1 lists
the blue, green, and red values you can use in the formula to create
other colors.
|
Blue |
Green |
Red |
Number |
Color |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
0 |
0 |
255 |
255 |
Red |
|
0 |
255 |
0 |
65280 |
Green |
|
0 |
128 |
0 |
32768 |
Dark green |
|
255 |
0 |
0 |
16711680 |
Blue |
|
0 |
255 |
255 |
65535 |
Yellow |
|
0 |
128 |
128 |
32896 |
Brown |
|
255 |
255 |
0 |
16776960 |
Cyan |
|
192 |
192 |
192 |
12632256 |
Light gray |
Using special characters
To include a character in a mask that has special meaning
in a display format, such as [, precede the character with
a backslash (). For example, to display a single quotation
mark, enter ”.
Setting display formats at runtime
In scripts, you can use GetFormat to get
the current format for a column and SetFormat to
change the format for a column at runtime.